Can psychologists make global warmists of us all?

“Do you have a tendency to worry excessively about the weather?”Corbis

“If there weren’t such a stark divide between American conservatives and almost everyone else on the question of the existence and importance of climate change--a divide that can approach 40 points on some polling questions--the political situation would be very different,” writes New York magazine’s Jesse Singal. Warmists need a way of “convincing a lot of conservatives that yes, climate change is a threat to civilization.” Achieving that objective “has more to do with psychology than politics.”

How many psychologists does it take to change a conservative’s light bulb? Only one--but the conservative has to want it to change.

Our reference to therapy was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. What Singal has in mind isn’t individual treatment but mass psychology--i.e., propaganda. His argument is that “the climate activist community” has “failed to understand” that “messages targeting conservatives” should be “radically different” from those aimed at liberals. He advises warmists to draw on frameworks from social and political psychology, such as ”moral foundations theory” and “system justification.” That ought to make it possible for them to develop methods to promulgate correct beliefs--or, as he puts it, “to nudge conservatives toward recognizing the issue.”

We’d say all this is unlikely to amount to anything--not because we doubt that the underlying psychological theories have some merit, but rather because Singal and the psychologists he quotes are laughably biased in their understanding of the “problem.”

Singal actually shows a glimmer of understanding in this to-be-sure paragraph, which ends with a quote from Dan Kahan, a Yale professor of both law and psychology:

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that for many conservatives (and liberals), the current debate about climate change isn’t really about competing piles of evidence or about facts at all--it’s about identity. Climate change has come to serve as shorthand for which side you’re on, and conservatives tend to be deeply averse to what climate crusaders represent (or what they think they represent). “The thing most likely to make it hard to sway somebody is that you’re trying to sway them,” said Kahan.

There is considerable wisdom in that Kahan quote. Who hasn’t had the experience of being put off by hard-sell persuasion techniques, whether in commerce, politics, religion or personal affairs? On the other hand, if one takes Kahan at his word, it calls the whole enterprise into question, does it not?

Singal is also correct to observe that attitudes about so-called climate change are often a matter of “identity.” He even acknowledges that is true of liberals as well as conservatives--but whereas he sees the latter as a problem to be overcome, the former is a mere parenthetical. The implicit assumption is that identity-based viewpoints are problematic only inasmuch as they are “incorrect”--counter to global-warmist orthodoxy.

To an orthodox global-warmist, that makes perfect sense. But it leads Singal to misapprehend the state of public opinion. Consider his claim that there is “a stark divide between American conservatives and almost everyone else on the question.” Is that really an accurate description?

Slate features a rather amusing piece by Eric Holthaus, who announces that “This week marks one year since I last flew on an airplane.” He immediately goes on the defensive: “To the likely dismay of Fox News, which called me a ‘sniveling beta male,’ my decision didn’t result in a dramatic tailspin of self-loathing or suicide, the ultimate carbon footprint reducer. Quite the contrary: It’s been an amazing year.” Whoopee.

“My decision,” Holthaus explains, “was prompted by a science report that brought me to tears.” (So Fox was right about “sniveling.”) “For the first time, I realized that my daily actions were powerful enough to make a meaningful change. . . . As a scientist and a journalist, society tells me I’m not supposed to have emotions. . . . But climate change is different. There’s no way you can be on the fence after seeing the data the way I’ve seen it.”

What Holthaus describes is a religious experience, which led him to engage in ritualistic self-denial. “For me, quitting flying is just another choice that brings me closer to living a life that’s in line with what I believe,” he writes. This is the language of spirituality, not science.

Of course Holthaus has a right to pursue spiritual fulfillment in whatever way suits him, at least as long as it does not harm others. But there’s no denying that his spiritual practices--in Year 2, he says, he may “move into a smaller house”--are highly eccentric. Even professional global warmists like Al Gore and Thomas Friedman are happy to live large irrespective of their professed beliefs. Do Singal and Kahan abjure air travel?

One could say there is a “stark divide” between those who take global warmism as seriously as Holthaus does and “the rest of us.” Or one could place the divide on this side of those who profess to take it seriously, like Singal and Kahan, but (we’re assuming) do not practice Holthaus-like self-denial.

The Pew poll to which Singal links offers some support for that latter view. It finds that while 61% of Americans agree that there is “solid evidence that the earth has been warming,” only a plurality (48%) think “global climate change” constitutes a “major threat” to the U.S. (Another 30% think it’s a “minor threat.”) And such surveys tell you nothing about the prevalence of true belief in global warmism. Surely some substantial portion of the 48% is the result of deference to authority rather than deep conviction--and thus is unlikely to translate into political support for costly measures that promise to promote climate stasis.

Singal claims that “in practical, apolitical contexts, many conservatives already recognize and are willing to respond to the realities of climate change.” He cites this example: “A farmer approached by a local USDA official with whom he’s worked before . . . isn’t going to start complaining about hockey-stick graphs or biased scientists when that official tells him what he needs to do to account for climate-change-induced shifts to local weather patterns.”

No doubt that’s true, but only because the farmer has to contend with the weather whether or not it is “climate-changed-induced” in anything more than the tautological sense...